[tied] Re: Franco-Provençal

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Arnaud Fournet" <fournet.arnaud@...>
wrote:

>
>
> > The issue is about the use and misuse of the word "language".
>
> And it's the sort of argument that I expect to see among laymen,
> not linguists. In the cases of interest the choice of 'dialect'
> or 'language' is fundamentally a sociopolitical choice, not a
> linguistic one. Picard, Veneto, and Schwiizertüütsch are what
> they are, whether you call them languages or dialects of French,
> Italian, and German, respectively.
>
> Brian
>
> ============
>
> Amazing.
>
> This is about as stupid as claiming that a horse is not a horse
> because it's gray instead of black.
>
> There exists objective reasons to describe varieties as dialects or
> separate languages.
>
> A.

What are those objective reasons?
If you applied those criteria you use for determining whether a
dialect or language exists within the Hexagon on say, the Yeniseian
languages, would they exist?


Torsten